A cooperative transmission protocol for wireless sensor networks with on-off scheduling schemes

A typical wireless sensor network (WSN) comprises a large number of wireless sensor nodes. This large number of wireless sensor nodes provides a network with redundant sensing power. By utilizing an energy-aware on-off scheduling scheme, some of the nodes can be switched off adaptively without affecting the sensing performance of a network. However, such kind of scheduling schemes will also break the multi-hop connections between nodes and a fusion center. Wireless sensor nodes will have to communicate with the fusion center directly, which will drastically shorten their lives. In this paper, a cooperative transmission protocol for WSNs with on-off scheduling scheme is proposed. In the proposed protocol, wireless sensor nodes will transmit their data cooperatively, such that data transmission loadings can be more evenly distributed. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol can yield a more even distribution of energy consumption among nodes. Performances of a network can be further adjusted by tuning some parameters.